Video published to mark 10 years of the EWWR!

The 2018 edition of the European Week for Waste Reduction was the 10th edition of the pan-European awareness-raising campaign. To mark this historic milestone, a video presenting some of the highlights on this journey has been created…

10 years of EWWR

The video, which contains a sample of the actions that took place this year but also over the past 10 years, illustrates the exceptional diversity of the EWWR, which has grown every year since it began - reaching ever further and expanding its horizons. This year - citizens, public authorities, NGOs, businesses, and educational establishments from across Europe and beyond mobilised to carry out actions.Take a look to cast your gaze back over the history of the EWWR, to relive some of its memories and see just how far it has come!

You can also view pictures from the latest edition in this flickr album, or clips from various different actions in our 2018 playlist.

The project was launched in 2009 as a 3-year project supported by the LIFE+ Programme of the European Commission, and was subsequently renewed in 2013. In 2017, the EWWR entered a new phase as it became financed through a European steering committee.

Although the EWWR has undergone considerable growth and changes throughout the past 10 years, its core mission has remained the same: to contribute to waste prevention and reduction at source across Europe and beyond, by encouraging and supporting the implementation of awareness-raising actions. In this sense, it has been a trailblazing initiative, acting upon the evidence that our consumption and production patterns lead to unsustainable levels of waste, and reaching out to citizens, organisations and policy-makers across Europe to bring about change, long before before the topic became widely-discussed in civil society and high on the political agenda.

Over the past 10 years the EWWR has gone from strength to strength, reaching millions of people across more than 40 countries, and preventing thousands of tonnes of waste from being generated. It has tackled specific challenges such as packaging waste, reuse and repair and food waste. There has been a steady increase in the number of actions, countries, coordinators, action developers. The first edition in saw 2,672 actions implemented in 14 countries, while this year’s EWWR saw over 14,000 actions organised across 30 countries.